XenForo 2.0 Discussion

[RobinHood]

Simple question really. Reddit is a nightmare. I own /r/Mustang and all it is is people posting pictures of Mustangs really. It compares in no way to the Ford Mustang forum I built.

I can also relate to this, some subreddits are lacking depending on the user base. The quality of content does vary depending on the community.

The real question is though, if you were to start your Mustang community from scratch all over now, how would you do it?

Could you even do it by starting a forum from scratch these days? How would you get the traffic? How would you get the users to register and post on your brand new mustang site vs any of the hundreds or possibly even thousands of Mustang facebook groups?

 

[Gladius]

Any new community starting today will have it infinitely harder than those that have established themselves years back. There's just way more competition in every possible niche than there was back then and XF hasn't really made any groundbreaking changes in forum functionality that would make it better engagement-wise in terms of what comes stock. When even something as simple and crucial as daily/weekly/whatever mail digests of forum activity is not available out of the box, the software is obviously stuck in some other decade. Or century...

Facebook is regularly filling my inbox with a stream of tease blurbs about what's going on in various FB groups that I joined. I probably wouldn't have looked at any of them more than once every few months as I don't use FB much, but those mails keep me in the loop constantly and every time something piques my interest, I pop back in. That kind of functionality should have come with XF by default years ago.

 

[Veer]

XenForo markets itself as 'A Compelling Community Experience', that may have been the case 7 years ago, but it certainly doesn't feel like it at this moment in time. "A compelling message board experience with fantastic extensibility if you have the money to pay a dev, and a pretty decent add on ecosystem", sure. But not a community experience.

Agreed, well said.

 

[Gladius]

Personally, I feel that the ball's been dropped due to XF2 development that's been going on for too long and affecting the current product and addons in terms of lack of development. Hiring Chris D wasn't enough, there just aren't enough people working on both the current products and the future ones. This kind of situation is either due to poor planning or understaffing or both.

 

[Gamorreaner]

If it is a slave, I'm in for it! But if we have to pay for additional programmers, count me out!

 

[zoldos]

Facebook is not a forum. It's a completely different type of site. Forums have a long life left and I can't wait for XF 2.0.

 

[imno007]

Sure, continue to believe that discussions on Facebook have more participants than similar discussions on your own forums because of XF not having threaded topics or whatever, rather than the fact that Facebook has billions of dollars behind it, is a full featured social media platform - not a forum (which is what XF sells itself as, so you knew that when you bought it) - and 2+ billion monthly active users.

 

[xenfans]

Just because it is a forum, doesn't mean it can't be social, user engaging, or simple to use .. like a social network platform does.
You can't have a rich media content discussion in a forum like you do on instagram, because you have to jump through hoops of navigation and permissions to view a bit of simple content that just wants a <3, like, thanks for sharing, or a quick comment.

Just because a forum is a well done forum package, doesn't mean it can't have features that tailor to the visitor who just wants to quickly participate.

To most a forum still has a learning curve, and requires browsing and a bit of techy approach. It even looks technical with it's "list" of content. Content in a list is no longer how people consume content.

I really do not get it why every time people give the feedback that they're hoping for a more 2017+ rich content - social feature - user engaging approach .. that there is so much push-back.

 

[rwm1962]

If I was starting a new 'group' now & it didn't need the structure a forum offers I'd do it on Facebook. Outside my own forums all the sites I'm active on are Facebook. I run 2 groups there myself.

My forums subject matter can't be covered in the depth & library/gallery forum style on Facebook. There are plenty of groups covering the same subject & they are attracting a lot of bread & butter members who are either less web savvy & find facebook easier & the show & tellers who will use my forums for research & post their items on Facebook, often with supporting info from my forums.

The native xenforo app is one of the most exciting facebook fight back tools I've seen although it's a high cost for small forums (I have 2 XF forums). I appreciate it's a new 3rd party app but I'd love to see this at an affordable rate or even better, part of the core of XF as standard or affordable extra.

 

[xenfans]

I mean, seriously .. *nobody* in here who is NEW to this thread is going to read through 145 pages of posts. And therefor most won't even participate in this discussion. And those who might have read *every* post, are the ones that feel invested from the start of the thread in this particular topic. There's a lot missing in a board, their forums, their discussions, the posts, the userbase, .. that could make participating much more compelling, right now Maybe on page 73, post 12 .. a staff member might have dropped "click here to download enterprise license to xenforo", and only those active on that day or maybe a day after might know about it. It's lost to everybody else. A lot of us as simply asking "that is great content, bring that forward through social interaction". Right now, the @OP of the post can't even edit their content, because it went past a time limit. The only solution there is now is quote-posting constantly that hidden post. I just don't get it why there's so much negativity towards people suggesting or wishing a forum could be a modern forum, ..

We have a huge thread on xenfans.com where we discuss 'why doesn't xenforo has..' and once in a while I've tried to suggest them for xf2, and xf1, so far 99% has been shot down with 'not something we want, or focus on, or care about, or blah blah'.. progress just doesn't seem welcome, and it's discouraged me from continuing to submit them. Fine, this isn't the platform that solves those questions, instead, the money goes to Paas/SaaS solutions instead. Even if it costs more. But at least the ROI is a lot higher, just because of the obvious.

 

[xenfans]

If I was starting a new 'group' now & it didn't need the structure a forum offers I'd do it on Facebook. Outside my own forums all the sites I'm active on are Facebook. I run 2 groups there myself.

My forums subject matter can't be covered in the depth & library/gallery forum style on Facebook. There are plenty of groups covering the same subject & they are attracting a lot of bread & butter members who are either less web savvy & find facebook easier & the show & tellers who will my forums for research & post their items on Facebook, often with supporting info from my forums.

The native xenforo app is one of the most exciting facebook fight back tools I've seen although it's a high cost for small forums (I have 2 XF forums). I appreciate it's a new 3rd party app but I'd love to see this at an affordable rate or even better, part of the core of XF as standard or affordable extra.

You'd be surprised how many people are part of groups on facebook for small gatherings, monthly bbq, yard sales, local area events, school stuff, college students groups, marketplaces, etc. The discussions are fast, on point, involving, and personal. Because they give local and personal results tailored to that person who goes to college, who tries to sell second hand stuff, who wants to know where to take the kids on sundays as a family away, or stay in touch with family, etc. I also thought nobody was using it until we did a case study and checked with the family and friends around us and I was surprised how many are in 8+ groups and are on them "constantly".

Post a "we have a market this sunday, who's going?" on most forums, and they consider it spam, or it gets closed for 'offtopic, doesn't match our general content", etc.

 

[rwm1962]

Post a "we have a market this sunday, who's going?" on most forums, and they consider it spam, or it gets closed for 'offtopic, doesn't match our general content", etc.

& those who wouldn't have. have already dead & resurrected on facebook.

 

[Gamorreaner]

I mean, seriously .. *nobody* in here who is NEW to this thread is going to read through 145 pages of posts. And therefor most won't even participate in this discussion.

That logic is flawed. People read the last few posts/pages and join conversations. That's also how you do it in reallife. Being recorded does not change anything about that.

 

[n00bsaibot]

Reddit's voting system does a good job of putting the most informative, funny, witty, replies at the forefront. Yeah, you miss a lot of posts. But you save a lot of time. Worth the trade off to me.

But it's more impersonal than a traditional forum, where you get to know some of the members. It's just too big.

 

[RobParker]

I mean, seriously .. *nobody* in here who is NEW to this thread is going to read through 145 pages of posts. And therefor most won't even participate in this discussion. And those who might have read *every* post, are the ones that feel invested from the start of the thread in this particular topic. There's a lot missing in a board, their forums, their discussions, the posts, the userbase, .. that could make participating much more compelling, right now Maybe on page 73, post 12 .. a staff member might have dropped "click here to download enterprise license to xenforo", and only those active on that day or maybe a day after might know about it. It's lost to everybody else. A lot of us as simply asking "that is great content, bring that forward through social interaction". Right now, the @OP of the post can't even edit their content, because it went past a time limit. The only solution there is now is quote-posting constantly that hidden post. I just don't get it why there's so much negativity towards people suggesting or wishing a forum could be a modern forum, ..

We have a huge thread on xenfans.com where we discuss 'why doesn't xenforo has..' and once in a while I've tried to suggest them for xf2, and xf1, so far 99% has been shot down with 'not something we want, or focus on, or care about, or blah blah'.. progress just doesn't seem welcome, and it's discouraged me from continuing to submit them. Fine, this isn't the platform that solves those questions, instead, the money goes to Paas/SaaS solutions instead. Even if it costs more. But at least the ROI is a lot higher, just because of the obvious.

It's all about content discovery. Forums don't need to massively shift their structure, they just needs to allow better discovery of content (like the license example in your post above).

Adding Post Ratings with more options than just a "Like" and add trending content based on those ratings and that's it. Job done.

 

[HannahP]

Hi. I just like to pop in to this thread every 1,000 days or so and make a post.

I do have a request though - it would be great if XenForo 2.0 could include native functionality that lets my users and I check (and ideally compare) our bank balances in real time. It would be cool if it included credit unions too, since many of my users are communists.

Oh, and a thing that shows me how many Rapid Rewards miles I have on Southwest.

Other than that, I'm good with whatever.

Thanks.

 

[jmurrayhead]

Hi. I just like to pop in to this thread every 1,000 days or so and make a post.

I do have a request though - it would be great if XenForo 2.0 could include native functionality that lets my users and I check (and ideally compare) our bank balances in real time. It would be cool if it included credit unions too, since many of my users are communists.

Oh, and a thing that shows me how many Rapid Rewards miles I have on Southwest.

Other than that, I'm good with whatever.

Thanks.

lost

 

[Digital Doctor]

Reddit's voting system does a good job of putting the most informative, funny, witty, replies at the forefront. Yeah, you miss a lot of posts. But you save a lot of time. Worth the trade off to me.

But it's more impersonal than a traditional forum, where you get to know some of the members. It's just too big.

But you have the option to drill down and read everything if you want.

So you don't have to miss anything.

But Xenforo's non-threaded threads makes reading this thread essentially impossible. It caters to the 20 people who always read it not the 100s of new visitors or less frequent visitors that could get something out of it but can't take 14 hours to read the whole thing.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I mean, seriously .. *nobody* in here who is NEW to this thread is going to read through 145 pages of posts. And therefor most won't even participate in this discussion. And those who might have read *every* post, are the ones that feel invested from the start of the thread in this particular topic. There's a lot missing in a board, their forums, their discussions, the posts, the userbase, .. that could make participating much more compelling, right now Maybe on page 73, post 12 .. a staff member might have dropped "click here to download enterprise license to xenforo", and only those active on that day or maybe a day after might know about it. It's lost to everybody else. A lot of us as simply asking "that is great content, bring that forward through social interaction". Right now, the @OP of the post can't even edit their content, because it went past a time limit. The only solution there is now is quote-posting constantly that hidden post. I just don't get it why there's so much negativity towards people suggesting or wishing a forum could be a modern forum, ..

We have a huge thread on xenfans.com where we discuss 'why doesn't xenforo has..' and once in a while I've tried to suggest them for xf2, and xf1, so far 99% has been shot down with 'not something we want, or focus on, or care about, or blah blah'.. progress just doesn't seem welcome, and it's discouraged me from continuing to submit them. Fine, this isn't the platform that solves those questions, instead, the money goes to Paas/SaaS solutions instead. Even if it costs more. But at least the ROI is a lot higher, just because of the obvious.

Which Paas Saas solutions have good content structures ? I'd love to see one.

 

[imno007]

Which Paas Saas solutions have good content structures ? I'd love to see one.

Yeah, tell me the format - any format - that would compel me to read every single post in this thread? Would I be any more inclined to do so if all the posts were on one endlessly scrolling page? Not me.